


the rise and fall // drift

by raekentheory



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Angst, Character Death, Drift Compatibility, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, It's an apocalypse verse afterall, Jaeger Academy, M/M, Multi, Not Thiam but definitely people around them, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-04-26 05:05:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14394909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raekentheory/pseuds/raekentheory
Summary: To fight monsters, they created monsters of their own. Ten ton beasts made of metal and piloted by two humans who had to share everything with one another.Theo's been there, done that. He barely survived it, and sometimes, he wishes he hadn't. He certainly doesn't want to do it again. But humanity's on the brink of destruction, and he'd rather go out in a blaze of glory than sitting on his ass. At least, that's what he tells himself.Right up until the day he meets Liam.





	1. damage

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo this has been sitting in a doc since I first joined the fandom, and it was supposed to sit here until I had time. Despite the fact that _I do not_ , here we are.
> 
> Tissues at the ready, folks.

All his life, Theo knew he wanted to be a hero.

He’d read every comic book he could get his hands on. He’d watched every movie, TV show and piece of media available to him. He owned action figures and posters, collectible cards and video games. He dressed up every Halloween, wearing black and red spandex and playing pretend. His mother didn’t always like that he’d chosen the Hulk as his favourite, but angry green science experiment suited him.

At least, that’s what his sister always said. He was pretty sure it was just to keep their mother’s ire directed at him for swearing and smashing things, rather than let her look Tara’s way for wearing a catsuit and owning a whip.

And then, one day, it stopped being pretend for him, and started being a reality.

One day, heroes stopped wearing masks and capes. They stopped being anonymous, and they definitely didn’t work alone. Instead, they wore advanced armour, were paired together, and they operated seven thousand ton machines with reactor cores and plasma weapons.

And they fought monsters as big as skyscrapers.

He’d gotten his first look at one the day it started in San Francisco. They’d been in the city to celebrate his mother’s birthday, two-hundred and eighty-four miles from home. A home he’d never gone back to.

It had taken fourteen months and six days for them to start fighting back, and several cities had been lost in the process, but the moment he’d seen the newscast of that first Jaeger dropping into the ocean and taking down a Kaiju, he knew that’s what he wanted to do.

He wanted to help people. Protect them, the way he and his sister had been. Save them, the way his parents hadn’t.

He didn’t just want to be a hero. He wanted to be a Jaeger pilot.

* * *

_Striker Wolf, please report to Bay 08, level A-42._

The voice is loud, tinny, blaring through the overhead speaker in their quarters. It sounds vaguely familiar to his sleep-addled brain. The fog in his mind clears slowly, ebbing away from him like the tide as the lights flicker on.

_Kaiju. Codename: Dreadnought._

Theo’s eyes snap open. Excitement crackles beneath his skin, waking up the rest of his body. He swings out of bed a split second later, landing in a crouch on the ground below. The cement is cold and stings at his feet, but he doesn’t much mind.

_Category 3. 8700 metric tons._

“Tara!” He calls, looking down at the bottom bunk. His sister’s blanket is still pulled up over her head, partially obscuring her from view. “Tara, wake up!”

She groans when he slaps the side of her bed frame. “Ugh.”

“We’re being deployed!” He chides. He slips out of his sweatpants, pulling on a flight suit laid haphazardly over the desk chair. He realizes halfway up the leg it belongs to his sister. “Tara!”

“Alright, alright!” She mutters, and rises from her cocoon of warmth. She makes a face as the cold air of their room hits her. “I’m up.”

“Here.” He throws her suit at her, and she catches them far more deftly than she should for someone who’s still blinking blearily at him. He ignores her, headed for the closet in the corner, a bounce in his step. “Hurry up. It’s a cat three. Biggest one yet.”

It’s always been like this with them, since they joined the Program. Since they were kids, really.

He’s an early riser, she sleeps like the dead. He’s restless and full of energy, and she’s calm, effortlessly composed. He tends to use his fists to solve a problem, but she’s always been about using her words. He’s a chocolate ice cream kind of guy, whereas she prefers vanilla.

Complementary opposites.

Two sides of the same coin.

(Except for the part where she’s three minutes older, and has literally never let him forget it.)

It’s why they’ve always worked so well together. Why they’ve got one of the strongest neural handshakes in the world.

“What time is it?” She frowns, pulling on a shirt.

“Two,” Theo grins, in the middle of zipping up his suit.

“In the morning? Ugh.” Tara leaves hers unzipped, tying the arms around her waist. She slips past him easily with her smaller frame and swipes his jacket from the higher hook in the closet, handing it to him before grabbing her own. It’s a routine as familiar to him as his own name.

As familiar as the comforting feel of his leather bomber jacket, snug at his shoulders. Though his nose wrinkles at the slight smell of champagne it carries, leftover celebrations of their last kill.  

“You forgot to dry clean it again, didn’t you?” Tara smirks and he sticks out his tongue at her, placing a hand on her back and herding her towards the door.

“Shut up,” Theo laughs. “I thought we had like, people for that.”

“Theo!” She smacks him in the stomach, shaking her head as she steps into the hallway.

As she passes, he takes a moment to admire the stylized wolf on the back of her jacket, the words _STRIKER WOLF_ painted beneath it. It’s mid-snarl, and there’s four strikes that look like claw marks in the space under their Jaeger’s name.

Tara seems to realize he hasn’t followed her out of the room then, because she pauses and looks back. “Theo, come on,” she rolls her eyes, but there’s an affectionate smile on her lips. “You can drool over our jackets later, dork.”

“I’m just thinking of how good it’ll look with a fifth kill on it,” he grins, catching up with her. In a few short steps, their movement syncs up, and they walk down the corridor towards the hangar as one.

The handful of Shatterdome staff they pass on the way there cheer and wish them luck, making his grin widen. Theo’s favourite part about being a Jaeger pilot has always been in the middle of a fight, the thrill and the adrenaline and the feeling of knowing, deep down, that you’re keeping millions of people safe.

But his second favourite part? The way pilots are treated like rockstars. After all, they’re Earth’s only line of defense against the wave of alien creatures that rose from the sea ten years ago. So there’s a fair bit of celebration around the teams that risk their lives fighting monsters. There’s posters out there with their faces on it, tacked to the bedroom walls of teenagers. There’s people wearing shirts with their emblem and knock-offs of their jackets. He’s even seen toys of Striker in the hands of kids, smashing up plastic Kaiju.

Tara teases him constantly, says he’s let the fame get to his head, but she never really means it. She knows how much this means to him. And besides, she keeps buying him all the Striker Wolf merch for his ridiculous collection back home, so she can’t really talk.

“Try not to get too cocky, kid,” she reaches up to ruffle his hair, voice sparkling with laughter. He’s always loved that about being paired his sister. It takes a hell of a time to wake her up for a drop, but once they’re suited up and out of the door, she matches him step for step in excitement. He’s grateful every day that Tara followed him into the Jaeger program, because he doesn’t think he’d ever have made it this far if it weren’t for her.

Theo’s always been a scrapper. Gloves off, ready for a fight at the drop of a hat. He used to love picking fights with the biggest, meanest kids on their block, and following his heart into battle. Feeling for his opponent’s next move, and trusting his instincts. But Tara? For her it’s about observation. About strategy and learning when to strike at your opponent’s weak spot. She’d always had her nose buried in a book as a kid, and tended to watch his fights, but never get involved unless he needed help, which was rare. She watched, and waited, and made sure her brother was safe.

It was no different at the Academy.

No one ever would’ve pegged the soft, quiet girl for a Jaeger pilot, but Tara comes alive in the middle of a fight unlike anyone he’s ever seen.

“Hey, Theo, you still with me?” Her voice snaps him from his thoughts, and he realizes they’ve made it to the suiting area. Tara’s already part of the way into her drivesuit.

“Yeah, sorry,” he grins, ears burning. He strips out if his jacket and flight suit just as a handful of officers show up to help with their armour.

“Good,” Tara smiles back at him. “I’d hate to have to do all the work myself, as usual.”

He barks out a laugh. “Now who’s being cocky?”

“What can I say? I’m in a good mood now that I’m awake.” He sees the pink dusting her cheeks, but he lets it slide. They’ve got bigger things to deal with, literally. The plasma display inside the suiting area is tracking Dreadnought’s process across the pacific from the closest Breach.

“Well, let’s get out there and kick some ass, then!” Theo beams.

They hustle through the door once they’re done suiting up, across the little bridge that connects them to their Jaeger. They move quickly, and in just a few short minutes are strapped in, helmets on. The door closes behind them as the tech crew shuffles out, and the two of them start flicking all of Striker’s switches, firing her up. He expects to hear the voice of whoever’s sitting at the command centre across the hangar in his ears next, right alongside the dulcet voice of Striker’s computer, but only the latter comes.

Theo frowns, looking to his right, towards Tara.

She’s got her finger hovering over the last switch, the one that syncs them to LOCCENT mission control. She’s chewing on her bottom lip, brows pulled tight across her forehead, clearly lost in thought.

“Tara?”

She glances over, smile tugging softly at her lips, and the dusting of pink he spotted earlier returns to her cheeks, just barely visible beneath her helmet. She inhales. “I’ve been seeing someone.”

“Uh—What?” Theo blinks, stunned. That hadn’t been what he’d expected to come out of her mouth. He looks around, heart pounding in his ears. All systems are green, ready for them to Drift. “Is this really the best time to tell me?”

“I was planning on telling you today, over breakfast. I—that’s where I was last night,” she continues, looking over at him. Her face is flushed, nearly as red as her hair.

“I thought you were logging extra hours on the training mats with Cora?” The same way she has every Friday since their adoptive sister got stationed here six weeks ago. His eyes nearly bug out of his skull. “You’re not seeing Cora, are you?! Because you told me at our Academy graduation party that it would be weird to—”

Tara barks out a laugh, shaking her head. “No, no, it’s not Cora.”

Theo breathes a sigh of relief.

“And _technically_ I was at the training mats, just… with someone else,” Tara offers him a guilty smile as his one brow raises. “Who she introduced me to?”

Theo doesn’t know whether he wants to laugh or be offended she kept something from him. Typically, they don’t keep any secrets between each other, regardless of the fact that if they did, the Drift would—

And that’s when it hits him.

They haven’t Drifted in a little over six weeks, when they’d been deployed in a fight where their Statterdome partners had fallen to a particularly nasty Category 3. Shortly after, Cora and her _Wildcat Fury_ co-pilot had been flown in and stationed here to replace the lost Rangers.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, awed. “Geyer?!”

“I wanted to tell you, before you see it for yourself in my head,” Tara says, voice careful. She looks a little sheepish, nervously chewing on her bottom lip like she expects him to be angry or disappointed. It’s so endearing that Theo can’t help but laugh.

“Oh, man. You are _so_ hearing about this when this is over,” he shakes his head, chuckling. Normally he’d be happy for his sister, and want to know all about the girl who’s managed to snag Tara’s attention. But given that he’s _literally_ about to see everything he needs to know… “I can’t _believe_ you waited until now to tell me. You’re the worst!”

It brings a smile to her face. The relief is clear. “Thanks, Theo.”

And then she flips the switch, flooding their HUD with colour and lights and the crackling of a radio. _“Striker! There we are!_ ” LOCCENT comes in loud and clear in their ears. _“What took you guys so long? Everything alright?”_

Theo exchanges a look with Tara, who grins. “Yeah,” she says, voice light and amused. “Just had to get something off our chests. Sorry about that!”

“ _Dreadnought is approaching Miracle Mile fast_ ,” another voice chimes in over the comm, sounding unimpressed. _“Time is of the essence, Striker.”_

“Of course, Marshal Hale,” Theo says diplomatically, wincing in his sister’s direction. He clears his throat. “Ready for drop, sir.”

_“Engage.”_

Both he and Tara reach out, hitting matching buttons on their consoles. A moment later, a boom echoes through the Conn-Pod, and they hear the distant sound of whirring as the platform beneath them begins to move, rolling them out towards the ocean. Striker Wolf’s nuclear-powered central turbine roars to life, and then the platform comes apart, dropping them into the water with the force of a small meteor impact.

_“Rangers, prepare for neural handshake,”_ Marshal Hale says.

_“Starting in four…,”_ the tech from earlier begins counting. _“Three…”_

At _“one”_ , Theo turns to see Tara’s wink, just before his world erupts with colour and sound and sights that aren’t entirely his own.

\- -

_She loses her grip on the balloon. Theo races after it down the pier, and she follows. Mom calls for them, and she turns in time to see the monster rise up out of the water. She screams as it walks through the bridge, decimating half the crowd and washing her parents into the ocean._

_The room is small, her new bed shoved into a corner that used to have a desk, judging by the posters and frames tacked above it. Cora tells her she can take them down, if she wants. They’ll find something she likes to replace them with._

_There’s blood dripping from her nose, trickling down to her lip, but it’s worth it. Her brother hadn’t been paying attention, and the prick had come at him with his back turned. She’s never fought anyone before, but the guy’s rolling on the ground screaming, so she figures she must’ve done something right._

_She looks over the college applications almost mournfully, sighing. She knew Theo wouldn’t want to go. She’s known every day for the last seven years. And she decided long ago she wasn’t going to let him do it alone. She wipes them from her desk into the trash, leaving the Jaeger Academy one behind. She picks up a pen._

_Derek smiles proudly at her, nodding his head as he clips her pin to her uniform. He moves to her brother next, and then Cora and onwards down the line. There’s eight of them that made the final cut. Theo reaches out to take her hand as the Marshal declares them Rangers, officially._

_The crowd cheers as they step into the room. Striker Wolf’s snagged their third kill. They’re presented with their jackets, already painted with the mark. She looks at her brother, grinning ear to ear as he slips into it. He pumps his fist into the air, shouting, and the crowd goes wild. She’s never seen him happier in her life, and her cheeks ache from smiling._

_She lands hard on the mat, breath knocking out of her. Her vision blurs momentarily, and then it’s filled with a grinning brunette. She swings a leg out, and the other woman collapses on top of her. They’re both breathing heavily, sweat-slicked from their training session. She smiles as she reaches up, pressing their lips together._

\- -

“ _Neural handshake strong and holding.”_ The voice from LOCCENT snaps Theo back to reality. He blinks several times to clear the images in his head, and glances right, towards his sister. She’s already there, smiling softly at him. He always wonders what she sees in those few seconds of connection, before they’re one.

“Right hemisphere ready,” Tara says. She always went first. Always.

“Left hemisphere too,” he parrots. “Striker Wolf ready to deploy.”

Theo raises his left arm, while his sister brings up her right, and together, they join their Jaeger’s giant, metal fists in the middle.

_“Better get moving, Raekens.”_

On the holo-screen before them, radar pings the Kaiju’s signature, far out in the ocean ahead of them and closing fast towards the red line ten miles off the coast.

“Copy that,” Theo says. They step forward slowly, moving faster and smoother with every stride. In moments, they’re approaching the line, and their radar pings again, off to the right. Away from the coastline, a smaller blip appears. It’s far too small to be Kaiju, and far too large to be basic debris. It looks like a boat.

A boat that should’ve retreated to shore by now.

“Sir,” Tara speaks up, frowning. “There’s still a civilian vessel out—”

Marshal Hale cuts her off. _“A radio warning was sent out when sensors picked up the Kaiju exiting the Breach. Any vessels that did not answer are lost, Rangers. I will not have you risk a city of four million for a boat of ten. Am I clear?”_

Theo glances at her, finding her frowning at him already. He reaches up without looking, hitting the button to silence comms. “Tara…”

“Theo, we have to.”

“I know,” he says softly. He hadn’t been planning on objecting. After all, he’d heard the thought clear as day across their connection before she’d spoken it. Her face splits in a grin that he matches a second later. As one, they turn Striker Wolf away from the bay and out into the night, towards the small, blinking ship on their radar.

They’re seven miles out from LA when their scanners pick up chatter from the fishing boat.

The fear and screams as Dreadnought surfaces from the ocean beside them, towering more than a hundred feet above. The thing is massive, any one of it’s limbs big enough to crush the fishing boat in a single swipe. It’s head forms a huge blade, with one edge narrowing from it’s upper jaw to a point, and the other jutting from it’s skull. Their sonar system outlines the rest of it beneath the water, it’s large, thick tail swishing in the depths of the sea.

He feels panic flicker in his chest, but isn’t sure which one of them it originates from. Either way, Striker Wolf moves faster through the water, bringing them up to Dreadnought. The boat sits between them, swaying in the waves.

“We’ll be taking that,” Theo says, reaching forward to scoop the fishing boat up with one hand.

Dreadnought rears back into a nasty roar, rocking the waves around them and showing off rows of sharp pointed teeth the size of very tall, bulky people. As one, he and Tara duck, bringing Striker Wolf under a massive swipe that would’ve torn through the hull, judging by the size of the Kaiju’s claws.

“Time to put you down,” Tara mutters, rolling her right wrist. Striker’s hand folds back, the metal groaning and twisting as it restructures itself into a plasma cannon. Steam and static crackle and hiss as it powers up.

Dreadnought takes another swipe, moving towards them. They duck, holding the boat out and away from the Kaiju’s attack. Over the scanner, the ship’s crew sounds confused, but some are cheering. And that was good enough for them.

“Now,” Tara tells him, and he helps shift their position for her to fire.

The first shot hits Dreadnought front and centre, causing it to stagger back. It’s roar splits the air, high pitched and wailing. The second shot shuts it right up, blowing a second crater into it’s torso. It wavers on its hind legs, maw hanging open soundlessly.

“Keep on it,” Theo says, watching the plasma cannon’s cooldown time on screen.

It doesn’t look necessary, in the end. The beast tips sideways, tumbling back into the ocean. Water boils around it, and in the bright spotlights on Striker’s exterior, they can see blue blood leaking into the sea as it sinks down, fading from view. As the bladed head disappears, the siblings exchange a grin.

“And that’s five!”. Her happiness floods across the Drift to him, and he mirrors it with his own pride. She quirks a brow at him. “Are you going to tell him, or shall I?”

Theo sighs. “Do we have to?”

She snorts. “You know we do.”

Wordlessly, he reaches up to flick the comms back on, and their links are immediately filled with Derek’s angry voice.

_“Striker! What the hell is going on?!”_

Tara reels the plasma cannon back in, and together, they spin back the way they came. Theo reaches down, depositing the fishing vessel back into the water and nudging it towards the shoreline. “Lit her up twice and got our fifth kill! Job’s done, sir.”

_“You disobeyed my direct orders, Rangers!”_

Theo opens his mouth to respond, but Tara beats him there, as always.

“Sir, we intercepted Dreadnought, and saved the civilians long before Miracle Mile.” Her tone is soft, pleading. He’s heard her use it a dozen times, when he got into fights as a kid and their adoptive mother wanted to give him shit for it.

_“Get back to the Shatterdome,”_ Derek growls. “ _Before I—”_

An alarm goes off in their ears, the inside of the Conn-Pod flashing bright red around them.

_“Kaiju signature!”_ LOCCENT yells. _“It’s rising!”_

The siblings pause, Striker Wolf coming to a stop as they glance left and right, then turn to watch the spot they’d downed the Kaiju. Theo squints, watching their radar and their display. All he can see is open water.

_“Striker, get out of there!”_ There’s no anger left in Derek’s voice, only fear.

They feel it first, a giant wave crashing into them from behind. Their Jaeger tilts dangerously, and then the entire thing rocks as something crunches the side of Striker Wolf’s head, not far behind Tara. Theo’s head whips towards the sparks, watching as rain pours in through gaping hole.

It’s why he misses it entirely when Dreadnought swings around them, comes up out of the ocean in front of them, mouth open in a roar. Tara lifts her right arm, catching it by the throat at the last second. Their field of view fills with gnashing teeth. “Theo!”

“Got it!” He nods, concentrating. Striker’s left arm transforms into a plasma cannon, whirring as it charges. Dreadnought screeches, slipping out of Tara’s grasp and off them.

It happens so fast that it barely registers for Theo.

The Kaiju charges, bladed head first, tearing into Striker Wolf’s left side. _His_ side.

Sparks fly. Hydraulic fluid sprays. And every pain synapse in his body fires full blast, burning and scorching.

A scream tears from his throat, and hears it in his head too, distinctly feminine.

Alarms blare on their overhead, and he can hear Tara’s voice over the groan and scrape of metal, but he can’t make out her words. He thinks she’s calling his name, but he can’t be sure.

Dreadnought roars, peeling away from them with the wreckage of their arm, tossing it into the water. He hears the splash, and the screams from the people in the fishing boat below, no doubt thrown around by the waves they’re creating, but he can’t focus. The pain is overwhelming.

If only the Kaiju could give them a moment to breathe. Instead, it barrels towards them, knocking them off balance again as it climbs on top, reaching for their head. A single claw pierces the hull, ripping through wiring and crumpling the metal around the hole it’s already made as it digs around. Electronics flicker and die out, one by one, on Tara’s side of the Conn-Pod.

Theo watches in horror as the claw comes down through the metal arm that holds his sister in place, skewering it.

“No,” he says quietly.

There’s no need to scream, she hears the word in her head loud and clear. Her eyes find his, wide with terror. Terror he feels, deep in his bones, raw and visceral enough to override the shock and pain from the damage he’s taken.

They both know what’s about to happen.

“Teddy, listen to me,” Tara pleads. “Remember—”

Time slows to a crawl. Her lips move, but he can’t hear her voice. Theo can’t hear anything in that moment.

The exact moment before his sister is torn from him.

From the Conn-Pod. From their Jaeger. From his mind.

Out into the night along with the entire right side of Striker Wolf’s head.

* * *

There’s sand beneath him. It’s wet and cold against his face. Theo doesn’t know where he is.

He tries to push himself up, but his left arm isn’t responding. He remembers it was torn off. Or maybe, it wasn’t? He stops trying.

Everything’s fuzzy. Something’s beeping. There’s a distant whirring, like helicopters, and people shouting nearby.

He rolls, trying to pinpoint something familiar, and is met with a brightening sky. Clouds. He’s confused, because he doesn’t know when it became dawn. He blinks, and sees blood in one eye. He can hear voices.

So many voices, but none of them hers.

“Tara?” he whispers. His throat is raw. His vocal chords are shredded, just like his drivesuit. He must have been screaming.

Sand pricks at his exposed left arm. It itches and burns, but he can’t really feel it.

He can’t feel anything other than a hole the shape of his sister in his soul.

* * *

They say he piloted Striker Wolf for twelve minutes after Tara died. They say he overrode the plasma cannon controls, and used his right arm—the Jaeger’s right arm—to blast Dreadnought to smithereens. They say he walked all the way to shore, and collapsed on the beach, far enough away from any civilians.

They tell him he’s only the second person to ever manage something like that. They tell him he’s lucky to be alive.

He doesn’t feel lucky. He doesn’t feel anything at all, really. Not when they drag Striker’s corpse from the beach and fly it to the junkyard in Oblivion Bay. Not when they add the fifth mark to his jacket in bright, glaring red. Not when he sees the crowds of people outside the hospital with signs and posters carrying his name. His sister’s name.

He’s celebrated as a hero, but he never feels like one. Not afterwards.

To him, it’s a hollow victory.

Everything is, without Tara.

Without her… he’s not even much of a person. 


	2. recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes Theo months to recover from the incident and death of his sister, but he never really heals. He quits the program and gets as far from home as possible, intent on drinking himself into the early grave he avoided. Not everything goes according to plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me? Taking an abrupt four month hiatus at the beginning of a fic? Absolutely. I am the worst. Sorry about that! So uh, here goes nothing I guess.

**SIX MONTHS LATER**

Theo downs the last of his pint, making sure he gets every last drop. It’s dull-tasting, a little darker than what he’s used to out on the coast, but if he gets enough of it in his system, it helps him sleep at night. Knocks him right out into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

At least, it has the last four nights since he got here.

Santa Rosa, New Mexico. A small town outside of Albuquerque, closer to the border.

It’s as far as he could get, hitchhiking and using what little cash he’d had on him. He didn’t dare dip into his savings in order to run away. Rangers made a decent living, but he and Tara had always pooled their money together. And using it to leave everything behind left a bad taste in his mouth, so he hadn’t touched it.

Especially since it would leave a trail the PPDC could track, if they wanted to bother with a washed up, broken soldier. He wasn’t any use to them anymore. It’s exactly what he’d told Marshal Hale and Cora as they’d watched him stuff what little clothing he had into a duffel bag and walk out.

They’d wanted to take him home, now that he’d been cleared to leave the rehabilitation wing. They’d wanted him to rest. But he’d done that for six months, healing what he could physically, plagued by nightmares and images in his head that weren’t his own. And they thought going to a house filled with her things would fix that? A house haunted by the ghost of her smile and her laugh and every memory left echoing in his head.

No, he couldn’t go home. Not when home wasn’t a house in Beacon Hills, but a person. A body they’d never find in the middle of the pacific, an empty box in the Hall of Heroes. Tara was home to him, and without her to anchor him, he was adrift, drowning in his own head.

He’d been lucky he’d snagged a couple PPDC ration cards on his way out. They were just paper, untraceable, and went to low-ranking officers and family members alike. Some were even distributed to victims affected by Kaiju attacks, people whose homes were destroyed and lives were lost. He supposed it was fitting.

They didn’t get him far out here; it was hit and miss on what places took them, but he’d found a bar that didn’t bat an eye on his second night in town. And that’s where he’s stayed until closing time, drifting out into the night to find somewhere to sleep.

Even if the company he has to keep sometimes gets on his nerves.

“Oh, he was a feisty one!” There’s a group of guys at the other end of the bar, watching a newscast about the most recent Kaiju attack.

Genbu, they’d called it. A Cat 3 that was almost big enough to rival the Dreadnought, with a thick Tortoise-like shell. It had surfaced on the Japanese coast earlier that day, and had caused untold damage to Tokyo before being put down by Arashi Koyote, Japan’s best Jaeger.

She was a Mark III, like Striker. She was the smallest of them, but also the fastest, and piloted by one of Japan’s best and brightest. Or so he heard. He’d never actually met the girl. He had met her co-pilot a handful of times though, had even gone through training with her—Derek’s estranged cousin, Malia.

It was fascinating to watch their Jaeger move on screen. How very different their fighting style was compared to his and Tara’s. Compared to most of the American Jaegers, really. They’d taken out Genbu in record time, but the ten minutes he’d been left to wander the city…

The camera feed cuts to the helicopter then, surveying the damage while a reporter drones on about how much had been hit. It’s far from pretty. The decaying body stretches across nearly three blocks of city, pressed into dust. And between it and the waterfront? Rubble and fire.

One of the guys laughs, low in his rounded belly.  There’s foam from his beer peppering his thick moustache. “Y’all wanna hear a good one?”

The other men around him clamour and nod, raising their beers.

“What do Jaegers and my marriage have in common?” He asks, loud enough for his voice to carry through the whole bar. Theo notices a few other patrons at the far tables look up. Annoyance throbs in his right temple when he spots the empty space on the man’s left hand.

“They both seemed like a pretty good idea at first,” he guffaws, his beer sloshing around in his pint glass. “But now they’re dysfunctional and still expensive as shit!”

Fire boils beneath Theo’s skin, white hot and spreading fast, like a shot of adrenaline in his veins. His grip tightens around his empty glass, his knuckles blanching.

This man’s accent places him as local, home grown. The kind of person who’s never had to live with the fear of a Kaiju attack, like people on the coast. The kind of person who goes about their daily life in peace, blissfully unaware of how lucky they are. Who has no idea what it’s like out there, what those brave men and women put their lives on the line for.

This is the kind of man Tara lost her life protecting? It’s sickening. Infuriating. Something elastic snaps inside of him, and Theo really can’t help himself.

“You think the Jaeger Program is a joke?” His words are brittle, his voice rough after hours of disuse. But they’re loud and very clear.

He watches the man freeze, glass halfway to his lips. He turns Theo’s way as he puts it down on the bar top, and his handful of buddies all follow suit. The grin that stretches across his lips looks far too pleased.

“I do,” he nods. “Bunch of our tax dollars go to keepin’ those trainwrecks going, and they can’t even keep those freaks in the water. They let them bull through the coastal cities, and then our money goes to fixin’ _that_ , too!”

“They keep the Kaiju from coming inland. They keep them away from you,” Theo says, keeping his tone neutral. “You think your money would be better elsewhere?”

“Do I ever!” He bellows. “They’ve talked about a coastal wall to keep the fuckers out! Why ain’t it been built yet?”

“Because it wouldn’t work.” His voice is tight, his patience with the man thinning.

“It would if we built it inland,” he argues, his smile turning more and more smug with every entitled word coming out of his mouth. “Let them have the coasters. We work hard out here. We earn a living, farming food for them and they waste it. We should keep it to ourselves, put the money back where it’s earned. Build us a military that can nuke ‘em if they make it this far.”

Theo can’t believe his ears. He watches the man take a huge gulp of his beer, then wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, satisfied as he casually suggests genocide.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” he continues. “You look young. I seen the fancy cards you use to pay for shit. They give those out to coaster military don’t they?”

Theo freezes, the weight of the cards in his back pocket suddenly pressing on him.

“It's not your fault you was raised thinkin’ this is how we save the world.” he shrugs. “Coasters don’t know the world is over. They keep fightin’, but there ain’t any point. Probably realized that when you washed out the program, didn’t you? Or did you make it far enough to see all your friends di—”

The stool clatters to the ground, his forgotten glass shatters, and Theo launches himself at the man, swinging. His fist connects with the left side of the guy’s jaw, and the other men let loose surprised yells as beer sprays over all of them.

He gets in a second punch before his head swims, a side effect of being six beers deep and getting up way too quickly. The next few moments are a blur as Theo fumbles his way through the fight, and when his wits return to him, he’s got his right hand fisted in the guy’s shirt, lifting him clear off his feet.

His left arm is reeled back for another punch, but  isn’t moving. Fear seizes his heart for a split second as he remembers waking up in a white room, unable to move anything on his left side. Being in the Jaeger when Striker’s left arm had been torn clean off had fried the circuits, leaving him scarred and with severe nerve damage that had taken him weeks to even begin to work through at the rehabilitation centre.

Then, he notices a pair of hands wrapped around his bicep, and settles a little.

Or as much as one can with a broken bottle pressed against one’s throat. It feels like a broken bottle, anyway. He can’t quite see it, so it very well may be a knife, or even glass from a broken drink. There’s also heat directly behind him, along his back and shoulders, and a pressure that feels like someone’s arms propped up under his, holding him back.

“You ain’t very smart, coaster,” the man spits, face turning red in Theo’s grasp. “Four of us, and only one of you. Didn’t they teach you odds in Ranger school?”

“Course not,” one of the guys behind him laughs, the one pressed against him, breath hot in Theo’s ear. “That’s why his friends are all dead.”

Theo thrashes, and the men all laugh. He feels another pair of hands wrap around him, this time circling his right tricep. Slowly, his grip on the idiot in front of him loosens, and he hacks and coughs once free.

So Theo does the only thing he can when restrained by three men. He spits on the moustache guy.

“Every word out of your mouth is a fucking insult to the men and women who gave their lives to keep you safe,” Theo tells him, words burning his tongue. They sear at his throat on the way up, quietly saying _coward, coward, coward._ As if he has any right to defend them when he abandoned the program entirely and fled.

Moustache looks at him, eyes turning cold and hard. The angry red hasn’t faded from his face. “Didn’t teach you manners either, I reckon,” he says finally, and Theo knows from his tone that things have just shifted. In a way he’s not going to like. “Maybe we should take you out back and show you some.”

“You can try,” Theo smirks, lifting his nose to peer down it. “I never was a good learner.”

He knows he’s in trouble. But if they take him out back, he’ll have more space. He’ll have a chance while they shuffle him there to break free and get his shit together. To maybe go down swinging, like he was supposed to in the middle of the Pacific.

“Neither are they,” a voice says, off to Theo’s right. It sounds angry, and far more feminine than anyone he’s heard yet. “Because I’ve warned them about fighting in my bar before.”

Moustache and the guy next to him—the one holding the sharp object to Theo’s throat, and restricting his right arm—both visibly pale.

“He started it,” Moustache complains, but gone is the bravado from his voice. His eyes are wide with terror, and his hands slowly rise at his sides, palms flat.

“I can’t say I blame him, the way you were running your mouth, Frank,” the woman says. “How would you feel if someone made jokes about your kid?”

Moustache—or Frank, Theo supposes, turns beet red, but this time nothing’s blocking his airway. His eyes narrow into small, furious slits.

“My son was a war hero.” His voice is dangerously low, his anger whispered in short, brittle words that just barely smother his fear.

“Fighter jet or Jaeger, the enemy’s still the same, as are the risks. We’ve all lost people to the Kaiju, but we’ve lost a hell of a lot less because of the Jaeger program and you know it.” There’s a tone of finality to her words, which quickly switches to a warning. “Now, I think it’s time you guys headed home, get some sleep. Warm and safe in your beds, because of people like him.”

The redness in Frank’s face dissipates, and slowly, Theo regains the use of his limbs as the other men detach themselves. One even mumbles an apology as he lets go. It’s not until the one holding the sharp piece of glass to his throat lets go that he truly relaxes. And even still, there’s a tightness in his shoulders as he watches the group of drunken assholes clear out of the bar—and spots the woman holding a shotgun behind the counter.

Waves of dark hair cascade down past her shoulders, brushing the bare skin of her muscled arms and the butt of the weapon held tightly in her hands. As she lowers it, offering him a tight smile, Theo sees her exposed throat—and the shiny, swirling patch of a burn scar marring her dark skin.

Theo clears his throat, rubbing at it with his right hand. His left hangs limp at his side, feeling slower at returning to his useless arm. It happened sometimes when he woke up, the rest of his body rising from slumber and forgetting to tell the fried nerves in that arm it was time to go.

“Thanks,” he dips his head.

“My pleasure,” she grins, carefully setting the shotgun on a shelf behind the bar. “Those guys are in here all the time, badmouthing the Jaeger Program. About time someone put them in their place.”

“I hope you don’t think it was me,” Theo says seriously. He nods towards the shelf. “Pretty sure that played a big part.”

“In shutting them up or saving your ass?” There’s a smirk on her lips. Playful, probably harmless. It draws out a ghost of a smile on his own.

“Both.” His voice is quiet. He carefully rolls his left shoulder, wiggling his fingers as feeling finally returns to that arm. He slides two ration cards from his back pocket, slapping it on the counter between them and reaching for the duffel bag he’d left at the base of his stool—which he puts back on its feet, while he’s at it. “That’s for the broken glasses. Sorry about that.”

The woman raises a brow, but says nothing. So he bids her farewell and heads for the door. He thinks briefly that he’s going to have to find a new bar to drink in every night, but her words cut off any further thought, slicing through the beer-tinted fog in his mind.

“I thought Rangers got paid a decent wage.”

Theo freezes, his whole body tensing up two feet from the exit. The knuckles wrapped around his duffel bag’s strap turn white, and as he looks down at the scuffed toes of his combat boots, he feels strangely heavy. His voice cracks when he finally speaks. “What?”

“Well, you’ve been paying with PPDC ration cards since you got here. Not a lot of people around here have them, so it stood out to me,” she says, and every word is like a small, jagged knife to the gut. Theo refuses to turn around, unsure of what to say or how he should react. “Jaeger pilots are practically rockstars, and I always heard it paid pretty well. So why the cards? Surely that’s a lot less inconspicuous than cash or plastic?”

Slowly, he does end up turning, his curiosity getting the better of him. Despite her tone, she doesn’t look smug the way her patrons had. Instead, the look on her face is inquisitive, curious. The dip to her brows, however, looks almost sad. His mouth opens and closes, having quite a bit of difficulty forming words that make sense. His brain seems unable to agree with his pounding heart about what he should say.

Slowly, the woman’s curiosity fades, replaced entirely by the sympathetic, quiet look. “And unless the PPDC didn’t pay for your physical rehab…”

Cold grips his heart, and he feels all the nerves in his left arm tingle, as though summoned by the mention of injury. “You—you know who I am?”

One corner of her lips curves up. “Its my business to know people.”

He doesn’t understand. He’d come all the way out here to escape, to run away from the ghosts haunting his every move. No one was supposed to know him here. He was just supposed to fade into the background and disappear, waste away like he deserved. It’s why he hadn’t bothered looking for work, or housing, or any means to care for himself after his ration cards ran out.

Which, judging by a cursory check of his back pocket, would be tomorrow.

_Shit._

The woman sighs, leaning away from the bar top and straightening. It exposes her throat to the low-hanging light above her, and he gets a better view of it. It’s mottled, a nasty burn, and in this light he thinks there’s almost a blue tint to it. Faint, but still present.

“I grew up on the coast. I was military in the early Jaeger days.” She pauses, raising a hand to motion at her burn car. “I was stationed in San Diego when I got this. We were deployed against Bonesquid and incredibly outmatched. But all we had to do was hold it off until the real defender got there.”

 _Bonesquid…_ Theo remembers that one pretty well, even if it was a handful of years before his enlistment. He’d been dead set on being a Ranger, and kept up with all the fights. He knew every Jaeger and pilot across the world, and most Kaiju, even the ones he had trouble pronouncing. Bonesquid had been a Cat 2 with several long, skinny limbs and razor sharp claws that were milk-white, and a massive, bulbous patch of skin on the back of it’s head, like a sac.

It had managed to wipe out the Ocean Beach Pier and had been tearing into SeaWorld when Hawthorn Brave had finally made contact, but had made it no further because of the valiant effort of the military and air support. Derek and Laura had taken it down, but when it had died, all of it’s blood had filled the bulb on its head, which had promptly exploded, showering three city blocks in Kaiju Blue, including the safe zone where the military had retreated to.

Anyone caught in the spray had experienced severe toxic burns.

“It took me three weeks just to be able to speak again, and I was honorably discharged with a Purple Heart. So I moved back here to help my dad with his business. I could’ve gone back, maybe, but then he got sick and well, now it’s my business.” Her brown eyes look sad, filled with longing, but there’s a smile on her lips as she continues. “I never went back, but I kept tabs on the Rangers that saved my life… and their friends, and family.”

Theo’s eyes widen.

“I’m sorry about your sister,” she says finally, quietly.

The soft words are like a punch to Theo’s gut. “Thanks,” he all but wheezes. He clears his throat, scratching at the back of his neck as his brows furrow. “Why… Why tell me all this?”

She plucks a cloth from the back shelf, wiping down the bar counter from one end to another as she speaks. “Because I’ve watched you the last few nights. You come in at the same time, always get the same thing, and drink until you pass out.” She looks up as she finishes, tilting her head. Her eyes are bright and assessing. “I get the feeling you don’t do it very far from here.”

Theo’s face heats. “What makes you say that?”

She simply shrugs. “A hunch.” She tosses the cloth back where it had come from, and turns towards the register, tapping her fingers across the bright blue screen. “I suppose you would always have family out here, maybe old friends, but I don’t think so.”

The register dings, popping open, and she quickly gathers all the cash inside of it, stuffing it into a zipper envelope she’s procured from somewhere. Theo shifts his weight from one foot to another, ignoring the pounding that’s still very much present in his head as he watches her. A quick glance around reveals he’s the only one left—the rest of the patrons having exited with the assoles. He feels like he’s intruding, but she clearly doesn’t seem to mind that she’s closing up shop in front of him. She ducks through a door into the back when she’s done, throwing a _one-minute_ hand gesture over her shoulder as she goes.

When she returns, she’s got keys jingling in her hand, and a jacket on. She lifts a section of bar up, and slides out from behind it to stand in front of him. She’s roughly the same height as him, and when she comes to a stop, she does so holding out her free hand. “So, how about you make a new one?”

“What?”

“A new friend,” she says matter-of-factly. “My name’s Braeden, and I come conveniently equipped with a couch to crash on and a job opening to offer.”

“A...job?” The word sounds strange on his tongue.

“Unless you have something else lined up?” The twist to her lips shows that she’s well aware he doesn’t. Nor did he plan to. He… hadn’t planned for anything really. He hadn’t seen the point, and still doesn’t.

Theo’s throat feels raw, even though it’s been long enough since to fight for him to have recovered. “Why?” The word feels heavy, weighted. He knows why he came all the way out here, where no one was supposed to know his name, where he could safely drink his liver into dust. It certainly wasn’t to gain responsibilities like friends and work.

The woman’s lips curl into a gentle smile. Warm, welcoming. “My father always lived by the belief of paying something forward, and while I don’t necessarily always agree, I… never really got to thank your brother and sister for saving my life.”

Theo raises one brow. “You know we’re not actually related, right?”

“Family doesn’t always start or end with blood.”

He’s heard nearly the same words from Talia and her children for years, so they hit home and knock the wind out of him for the second time tonight. Carefully, he takes her hand and shakes it. In his stupor, he barely feels the duffel bag slip from his fingers, and realizes as he clears the cloud of longing from his mind that Braeden’s taken it from him. And she’s started her way towards the front door.

“Why do I feel like I’m not really getting a choice here?” He says, trailing behind her.

“Are you? Hmm.”

The air is thick outside, warm even at this hour. The street lamp outside the bar flickers on and off in short bursts, and it’s eerily quiet. Out here, Theo can see the stars. Shatterdomes were lit like stadiums, and stars were always impossible to see above LA’s base unless you climbed all the way up to the roof. Even then, they were dim compared to the sky above him. But Tara had still loved them. She’d always dreamed of being up there, someday, closer to them.

Maybe now she was.

“Come on, Flyboy!” Braeden calls to him, and he rips his gaze away from the twinkling sky. She’s a little ways down the sidewalk, still holding his stuff. “We’re up early tomorrow.”

“You open the bar that early?” This was already sounding like a horrible idea. One that he hadn’t even accepted yet, officially.

“Oh no, you’re not working back there with a face like that! You look like you wandered in off the street!” Braeden laughs, and as he starts after her with a slow gait, he touches at the thick, scraggly beard sitting squarely on his face.

He frowns. “I kind of did.”

“My point exactly. No, I have something else in mind for you,” she says, re-adjusting the strap on his duffel bag. He reaches forward to take it from her, but she shakes her head, waving him off. Instead, she turns bright, excited eyes on him, a sultry smile snaking it’s way across her lips. “They taught you mechanics at that fancy Jaeger Academy, didn’t they?”

* * *

**TWO YEARS LATER**

Theo likes working the garage on Saturday’s. It’s quiet, the rest of the shop guys off enjoying their weekend with their partners and children and friends while he was free to fix up cars in peace. Well, relatively in peace.

Braeden is around somewhere, presumably working on her bike, if the upbeat, aggressive electronic music blasting from the overhead speakers means anything. She keeps it fairly open during the week, and it varied depending on whose day it was to pick music. But Saturday’s were wholly hers. Well, hers and Theo’s, but he didn’t really mind what they listened to. With grease on his hands and his head tucked under the hood of this Bronco, he was so into the zone he barely heard it anyway.

At least until the midday news comes on.

“ _Less than three hours ago, a Category 4 Kaiju breached the Sydney barrier.”_

Theo’s gaze whips up to the TV hanging at the corner of the garage just behind him, above the doorway to the front of the shop.

The reporter’s voice-over is set against shaky, pixelated cellphone footage of a massive, hulking beast slamming it’s way through the coastal wall. It roars as it comes through, shaking bits of debris from the huge, Rhino-like blade at the front of it’s face. As it barrels on towards the city of Los Angeles, the scrolling banner across the bottom identifies it as _Bladehead._

Fitting, he supposes.

He watches as the creature ploughs it’s way through the scattered, man-made islands that had been set up to slow the assault of any Kaiju that made it through the wall. Not that they were _supposed_ to be any that made it through. The wall had been heralded as impenetrable. Unbreachable by even the largest of Category 4s.

Evidently, that had been a lie.

Army aircraft went at it with everything they had, firing one barrage of missiles after another, to little avail. It only ever slowed it down. It tore through the harbor, ripping through boats and ferries, debris flying as it stomped it’s way towards the city.

_“This is the third attack in as many months. Both Australian Jaegers were destroyed in the fight.”_

The feed changes then, displaying a Jaeger sinking into the pacific, its chest cavity ripped open and flames blazing inside the cockpit. Echo Saber, one of the few Mark IVs.

Then it cuts again, this time showing Bladehead spearing a second Jaeger open, lifting it off the ground and slamming it into the ruins of the Sydney Opera House. Theo feels a chill creep up his spine. He knows this one too. Neon Taipan. A Mark III launched the same year as Striker. They’d been piloted by a couple, if he remembers right. Emily and Caitlin.

The hollow space in his chest fills with pity, and he turns away, gripping the wrench in his hand tighter. He returns to tightening the bolt he’d been after, listening and shooting the occasional glance at the TV screen.

The reporter begins talking again as the feed cuts to footage of two Jaegers being airlifted in, her tone brighter and more hopeful. _“But all wasn’t lost—our own Alpha Brawler and the German Kobalt Bracer were flown in and managed to take the beast down in record time.”_

The first Jaeger is bright red, and Theo would recognize it instantly, without the reporter’s commentary. McCall and Stilinski. They’d been friends as kids, had gone through the Academy together. After getting their Jaeger, the boys had been stationed up the coast in San Francisco’s Shatterdome, so he and Tara had fought alongside them pretty often.

The other machine is a steely blue, and Theo’s seen it a handful of times over the years on newscasts. It was Russian made and stationed in Vladivostok, but piloted by two German twins, he was pretty sure.

He watches the two Jaegers dance with Bladehead for several strokes before they gain the upper hand, and the feed ends with Alpha Brawler ripping the horn from its face and impaling it. Then the reporter returns, smiling softly, while a smaller version of the feed displays the pilots exiting their Jaegers in Sydney and being welcomed with applause.

They’re eventually waylaid for an interview, and Theo fixes his attention on replacing the rusted crankshaft. He listens to the woman ask the pilots about the dying Jaeger program, about their thoughts on whether or not today proves the theory that Jaegers are costly and inefficient.

He doesn’t watch the rest of the broadcast. He tunes it out, back in the zone. Distantly, he can still hear the buzz of their voices, and presumably more footage of the day’s events, if the whirring of helicopter blades are of any indication. He thinks briefly that they sound wrong, louder than they should be for news footage, but then he has to use both hands to rip the shitty part from the engine, so he falls back into the zone and the shop sounds fade away around him.

At least, until Braeden surfaces ten minutes later.

“Hey, Flyboy!” The voice startles Theo from his thoughts, and he flinches upwards, banging his forehead against the hood.

He winces, hissing out a quiet _fuck_ between his teeth. “Over here, boss.”

Braeden appears around the side of his truck, one brow raised and an air of amusement about her. It sets off the smallest of warning bells in his mind, which only softens the blow slightly when she says: “Someone’s here to see you.”

He blinks, frowning as he processes the words. His shoulders tense, nerves locking them tightly. All he manages is a confused: “What?”

Theo lowers the hood slowly, and when the guest comes into view it knocks the breath nearly right out of his lungs. He freezes in place, hood almost slipping from his fingers and slamming shut on his other hand.

There, standing in the middle of the shop just a few paces behind Breaden, is a man clad in a fresh navy blue suit, adorned with military pins and stars. There’s a matching hat tucked neatly under his arm, and a charcoal coat hung underneath it. He’s sporting quite a bit more beard than Theo remembers, but it looks good on him.

His throat dries up at the sight, unwilling to spit out any words. He doesn’t even know what to say, where to start. After all, this isn’t a scenario he ever prepared for. He went far enough off the grid to ensure it.

At least, he thought he had. Yet here Derek stands.

“Marshal Hale,” Theo nods, standing to attention but resisting the urge to salute. Military training isn’t that easy to shake. The slight curve of Derek’s lips looks amused by this.

“Theo,” he says, with all the familiarity of their years together and none apart. Tension bleeds from Theo’s shoulders. “It’s been awhile.”

“Two years, three months,” Theo says without hesitation. He could add the days and hours if he wanted, but it wouldn’t change a thing. It hasn’t in all the time he’s been counting. Every moment since he’d woken up in a bed, in the middle of a Shatterdome medbay, a piece of himself missing.

Siblings or not, he and Tara had been the closest people in each other’s lives. When you Drifted with someone, it created a kind of bond that you couldn’t experience with anyone else. A level of intimacy than ran deeper than love, or friendship.

The kind that when torn out of you left a hole you could never fill. That left you with a painfully clear sense of time. It never moved too quickly, or too slowly. It was constant, letting Theo live every moment without ever letting it slip away from him. Letting him be incredibly aware of every second he drew breath, and Tara didn’t.

The look in Derek’s eyes is understanding.

After all, he’s lost people too. And Tara might’ve been an adoptive sister, but she was family to him all the same. Theo remembers how hard it had been, sitting in a room with Derek and Cora in the rehabilitation wing. Without her.

“Can we talk?” Derek asks.

 _Aren’t we doing that?_ Theo bites his tongue. From the look on Derek’s face, this isn’t the time to joke.

As if sensing that, Braeden clears her throat. “Well, it’s been pretty quiet today, T. I think I’m gonna close up early and get in a little me time before I open _Tilt_.” She walks backwards through the shop, away from them. Her eyes slide in Derek’s direction once she’s past him, making her message clear to Theo. “You good to lock up?”

“Yeah,” he nods, hearing the small gap after the first two words. “Yeah, I’ll meet you at the bar later.”

He’d worked the garage for about six months, saving up every penny, before he’d been able to get himself an apartment. He’d felt like he’d been imposing every minute of those six months, so when he’d finally gotten back on his feet, he’d offered to do double shifts, with the second unpaid, to make it up to Braeden.

She’d refused, and told him as long as he shaved his homeless beard, she had a spot at the bar for him. She didn’t much care that he had no liquor license, just that he was good with a crowd. She already knew he was good at mixing drinks, considering Fridays at her place he was in charge of drinks while she cooked. So he worked the garage for her during the day, and the bar with her at night.

It was sometimes exhausting, but it kept him busy, kept his mind from wandering, and most of all—kept him anchored to here and now. Gave him purpose he hadn’t had since waking up as half of a whole. It didn’t heal everything, and he had never expected it to, but Braeden was good people, and her friendship had been a salve to the gaping wound in his heart.

“It took me awhile to find you,” Derek says, and Theo snorts.

“Yeah, that was kind of the point.” He wipes the grease from his hands with a shop towel. “How _did_ you find me?”

“Danny.”

 _Of course._ Theo almost laughs. If there was anybody who could find a Ranger who’d jumped ship, leaving behind little to no trail, it’d be him. He’d been born to deal in code and technology, Theo’s sure. He’d helped refine the operating system for the Mark IIIs while piloting a Mark II himself, and he never let anyone else do the maintenance on its core processor.

Sky Rattler had been out of the news and spotlight since last year, and Theo wonders for a moment if its his fault. Derek couldn’t possibly have taken the pilot off rotation just to chase him down, could he?

“Why now?” He ends up asking instead.

“I’ve spent the last six months activating everything I can get my hands on,” Derek tells him, face grim. “Everything the program had left to offer. Every Jaeger, every pilot left out there.”

His voice cuts out, and a series of nasty coughs wrack his body. Derek turns away to hack into a kleenex, and Theo frowns, watching him. From the reports, the Jaeger program had been on its last legs for months, the UN council believing it wasn’t worth the costs they were paying to keep it running. So what was Derek doing, asking him back in? Because he was certain now that was the reason. If it wasn’t, he’d already have been in handcuffs by now.

“I’m not a pilot anymore,” Theo says, and he can feel the words echo in his hollow chest. Slowly, Derek stands up straight, regaining his composure.

“And I’m not asking you to be—not if you don’t want to.” Derek’s voice is tinged with sadness, his eyes understanding. Sympathetic.

“I don't.” There’s bitterness to his tone, creeping into his words and tightening them. “I have no business being one, not without Tara. She’s still—I don’t know if I can have anyone else inside my head.”

“I get that.” The Marshal nods slowly. “But you know she wouldn’t want this for you.”

“Don’t.” Theo takes a step back, brows furrowing. He shakes his head. “Don’t do that.”

Derek approaches, hands up and palms flat. He places one hand on Theo’s shoulder. “You know I’m right, T. She wouldn’t want you to stop fighting, to lay down and wait for death to come knocking. She’d want you to help people.”

His throat burns, and no matter how much he tries to clear it, the feeling remains. It matches the one behind both eyes, worsening every second that Derek regards with understanding.

“The world is ending, little brother,” the Marshal says, tone reassuring. He’d always know exactly what to say to get Theo to listen to him, to believe in him. Anyone, really. He always figured that’s why he’d been made Marshal after he and Laura had retired from active duty. “So where would you rather be? Here?”

Derek motions to the shop around them, quiet now that his boss has left, her music silenced. Theo thinks sadly of Braeden, and the bar, and his shitty little one bedroom apartment.

“Or in a Jaeger?”

_Teddy, listen to me. Remember—_

Theo doesn't bother replying. Derek's always been a fan of rhetorical questions, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I put way to much thought into this easter egg naming shit:
> 
>  **Arashi Koyote. Mark III. Japanese.** Translation: Coyote Storm. Malia is the Coyote half.  
>  **Neon Taipan. Mark III. Australian.** Caitlyn appeared in the glow party episode, and her girlfriend Emily had a run in with a snake outside their tent the night she was killed by the darach: Taipan is a breed of Australian snake.  
>  **Alpha Brawler. Mark III. American.** Scott's an Alpha, and Stiles' signature weapon is a bat.  
>  **Kobalt Bracer. Mark II. Russian.** Steiner is a German surname. I imagine that countries that weren't on the Pacific and therefore didn't have Shatterdomes contributed to the war effort with engineers, techs, scientists and maybe even pilots. Kobalt means blue, like the eyes of wolves you've killed innocents.
> 
> I promise you Liam actually appears next chapter. Bear withhhh.

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone that hasn't watched the movie: ~~seriously what are you doing go watch it immediately it's a masterpiece~~  
>  **Jaeger.** German, hunter.  
>  **Kaiju.** Japanese, giant beast.  
>  **Conn-Pod.** Jaeger’s detachable cockpit, built as the head.  
>  **LOCCENT.** Short for Local Command Center, dispatch for Jaeger operations.  
>  **Shatterdome.** Launch base for Jaegers, built in port cities on the Pacific.


End file.
